Renewable Energy in Russia in the Midst of Turbulence: Focused on the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia)

This paper examines the development of renewable energy in Russia, with a focus on the concept of ecological modernization as an analytical framework with an aim to see the realities of green transition in the country that seems to have fallen behind other major countries in the dynamics of decarbonization. At the national level, Russia’s green transition is slow and sluggish in terms of the installation of variable renewable energy (VRE) generators, despite the fact that it has a considerable amount of latent renewable sources to contribute to decarbonization. On top of this, it has become more difficult for the country to navigate the decarbonizing world as a result of the unprecedented economic sanctions that have forced Western firms to give up their operations in the field of renewables. The demonstration project on the use of wind energy in Tiksi, a northern town in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), has shown that wind energy production has successfully progressed as part of the Japan–Russia energy cooperation; however, due to the impact of energy and financial sanctions, it seems unlikely to start a new initiative for wind energy development in the republic with abundant wind resources. In the context of ecological modernization theory, the pathway to a decarbonizing society with innovative renewable technologies is now shut down rather than closed for Russia, partly because of malfunction of domestic institutionalization and mainly owing to Western economic sanctions. This is in contrast to China’s experience, wherein ecological modernization has been forced as a national policy in the last two decades.